Review of The Truth About Plumbing

[Joanna Perry]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Truth About Plumbing" by Avram Friedman.]

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5 out of 5 stars

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The Truth About Plumbing is by Avram Friedman, an experienced plumber and environmental activist. It is an amusing and informational book that made me laugh out loud and worry about my home’s plumbing system. Murphy’s Law relates to plumbing at every level. The author shares some of the disasters he has encountered while practicing his profession and indicates throughout the book the faults of the various pipes, washers, fixtures, screws, and nuts that are necessary for a system to work. If something can go wrong, it will, and the devices that make up modern kitchens and bathrooms will break down eventually.

Friedman had his first plumbing lessons on a kibbutz in Israel, where he traveled after college. Kibbutz Gezer was an abandoned area with housing that needed repair. The author became part of the group that reconstructed the simple water supply system. The group learned from trial and error, and the author retained these lessons upon returning to the States.

Going from a simple, almost primitive, water delivery system in Israel to the complex pipe configurations in most homes and businesses in the United States required the author to become a problem solver extraordinaire. Friedman’s humorous anecdotes lighten up repair work that could not have been pleasant. The plumber encounters the Law of Action and Reaction when something done in one place of a system results in a water leak somewhere else. What causes the problem and how to fix it is the reason plumbers exist.

Friedman is concerned with the impact populations are having on the environment. He is an activist in his home state of North Carolina. Although the problems people cause are numerous, the author is optimistic that man will discover living solutions that do not harm our planet.

I give The Truth About Plumbing a rating of 5 out of 5 because it is well-written. The subject could be tedious, but in this book, it is not. It is engaging and entertaining.

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The Truth About Plumbing
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